The gallery will cost an estimated $50m, so figure $60m …

The gallery will cost an estimated $50m, so figure $60m with cost overruns.
The Desert Park loss each year is $3-5m and the gallery will also run at a substantial loss.
NT revenues are in dire straits and the hard heads in Darwin will be saying that a gallery is unaffordable and will not pay its way by increasing tourist numbers sufficiently.
Whether the Desert Park has been a success in achieving the increased tourist numbers to justify its cost and operation is debatable.
A heap of NT money is spent manning every alcohol outlet in Alice Springs and now this?
The town is awash with galleries of Aboriginal art, just call into Papunya Tula to see a fine representation of Western Desert Art.
The Cultural Centre is underused, has space and is also losing money.
No wonder no dollars have been allocated to the gallery.
In all likelihood it won’t go ahead and if it does it will be at the Cultural Centre.
Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect more than that.

Jones Also Commented

Work started on national Indigenous art gallery for AliceFunding may be available to the “National Indigenous Cultural Centre in Alice Springs” ($20m) to 2020/21?
Any proposal that has funding in five years’ time is not a priority and probably won’t go ahead.
The NT Government don’t want the negative politics of rejecting it so they delay the funding, perhaps for another government to make the final decision on.
Far too early to be crowing about this, Chansey, and wasting everyone’s time discussing where it could be located.

Recent Comments by Jones

At last, public will get a say on Anzac Oval: Town CouncilGunner has made the right call on the location of the proposed gallery and offered substantial funding.
No other sensible and economically viable location has been proposed.
The gallery will probably operate at a loss as does the Desert Park.
To be sustainable the loss must be minimised and it must add value to our tourist businesses.
South of the Gap / at the Desert Part are not suitable locations.
The Greens are engaged in misguided economically damaging democracy.
They are doing the same by using their position on the Water Board to slow down mining development at Mt Pearce.
This action threatens the offer of generous funding.

The millions and the miseryEugene’s Mate: “Unreasonably negative and incorrigibly antagonistic attitude towards Congress pathological denial of Congress’s achievements? Very unfairly, maligning Congress.”
Any organisation that gets more than $40m a year of taxpayer money, has $20m unspent and has a stake in CentreCorp with assets of more than $50m absolutely needs to be held accountable.
It worries me that you fall back on excuses such as saying that poverty is the main driver of renal disease (and of course Congress can’t change that).
How about, a sedentary lifestyle, living in squalor, poor diet, alcohol and smoking, all of which Congress should be able to do something about.
But they haven’t despite all the millions.
A new approach is needed.
Take diabetes:
Although there are other factors, diabetes is a major cause of end stage renal disease. Many of us have watched the progression from diabetes to end stage over the years.
I’ve personally seen it a dozen times or more.
Uncontrolled diabetes is rampant in our community and the deaths are mounting.
Congress has largely failed to stem the tide so we need to try something else.
That is a medical approach.
Instead of expensively trying to change behaviour and failing we need new drugs and medical devices.
That means more money for research and probably less for Congress.
Of course that is confronting and will get the reaction we see from you.
But Aboriginal health is bigger than Congress and is the priority.
A medical approach has the potential to save many hundreds of millions of dollars and improve Aboriginal lives on a large scale.
That claim cannot be made about Congress.

The millions and the miseryEvelyne, the research to quantify the extent of HTLV-1 was carried out years ago and the results were scary for Aboriginal people.
There will be a large death toll in coming years.
Very little is being done to discover a drug to treat it.
Your question has broader implications.
Should the taxpayer keep funding preventative programs to the extent we do when they are not working?
Wouldn’t Aboriginal health be improved far more by putting the money into the development of medical responses.
For example, there is an urgent need for implanted insulin delivery devices that require diabetics to do nothing.
There are several life threatening diseases, HTLV-1 being just one, that urgently need medical approaches such as drug treatments for prevention and/or cure.
Aboriginal health would be improved far more by redirecting at least some of the tens of millions wasted on Congress to researching new treatments.

The millions and the miseryEugene’s Mate: Let’s cut to the chase.
The result of a failure of type two diabetes prevention and control programs is often end stage renal disease.
So the incidence of this terminal disease is a good measure of the success or failure of diabetes programs for which Congress has responsibility.
The NT has the highest incidence and prevalence of kidney disease in Australia.
The 2014 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) National Health Survey showed the prevalence of disease markers amongst Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory was 40% and non-Indigenous of 9%.
According to Menzies School of Health research “demand for dialysis has been sustained and incidence rates have not plateaued”.
In other words the incidence of end stage disease is out of control despite the tens of millions of funding provided to Congress.
Tens of millions now have to be poured into dialysis treatment.
Soon it will be hundreds of millions as the numbers of patients is soaring.
I am unable to agree that Congress has long been a leader and good practitioner in prevention and early intervention strategies and practices.

Three men escape from gaolPaul Parker: Yes, low level security is appropriate but only for low security prisoners.
The prison is overcrowded and holding far more prisoners than its design capacity.
Medium security prisoners cannot always be housed in the medium security section of the prison.
They are sometimes sent to the low security cottages.
Similarly only low security prisoners are supposed to be in work gangs etc, but we see from escapes that this is not always the case.
This mistake cost CEO Ken Middlebrook his job but it could happen again.
So while low security is appropriate for low security prisoners it is highly inappropriate for medium security ones.